When we ignore the body, we are more easily victimized by it.

While people are fairly young and the musical composition of their lives is still in its opening bars, they can go about writing it together and sharing motifs (the way Tomas and Sabina exchanged the motif of the bowler hat), but if they meet when they are older, like Franz and Sabina, their musical compositions are more or less complete, and every motif, every object, every word means something different to each of them.

Looking out over the courtyard at the dirty walls, he realized he had no idea whether it was hysteria or love.

And therein lies the whole of man's plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.

But was it love? The feeling of wanting to die beside her was clearly exaggerated: he had seen her only once before in his life! Was it simply the hysteria of a man, who, aware deep down of his inaptitude for love, felt the self-deluding need to simulate it?

Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress.

True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.